Yeah, and it's nuts how many new ideas Hickman's added beyond what was in HoX/PoX. In the X-Men comic now, there've been two issues that are as eye-opening and brilliant as anything in that set-up mini-series: #4, the Davos issue; and #7, the Crucible issue. There's stuff in there that, like, redefines the redefined X-Men.

Speaking of X-Men, what was everyone's favorite early to mid 90s Toy Biz X-Men action figure if they ever had one? It could be one you owned or not. As for myself I LOVED the Morph toy a classmate had. It wasn't anything special, but I just loved it had additional heads you can swap. I just found it interesting how he seems like the type of person Wolverine would be annoyed and hate right away, yet they were thunderbuddies for life pretty much.

So this is a thing now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlvJZKIqMoY

Marvel has acquired the comic rights to Alien Xenomorphs and Predator!

Artist David Finch has done some promotional covers/posters as a tease.

Officially speaking, this deal doesn't ret-con the older films of both as MCU entries nor are Alien and Predator expected to become a part of Marvel Multiverse canon, but the possibility of a crossover with preexisting Marvel Mainstays has gone up significantly!

https://www.ign.com/articles/alien-p...avengers?amp=1

Funny how movie properties that were once part of the Dark Horse Comics lineup are now Marvel.

When Marvel started in on which Spider-Man costume is the best, someone on Twitter mentioned a "Spider-Phoenix" and I honestly can't find anything official on that at present!

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/ma...htiest-show/#5

It's Spider-Man #25, featuring Excalibur.

Thank you.

Kinda curious why this has been forgotten and buried!

It's from a not-very-memorable era of Spider-Man. It was after McFarlane and Larsen left, when the book didn't really have a clear direction. This one's basically just a one-off fill-in issue. The art's by Chris Marrinan, probably no one's favorite artist. As it is, it's more of a trivia answer than a compelling story.

Spider-Phoenix sounds like a horrifying spider-type monster that never dies from a fantasy story. :lolol

The pandemic caused me to fell behind on collecting comics, but thankfully I didn't miss much except for a couple of issues. Although DC produces comics more than Marvel atm.

Still gonna need to finish Hickman's X-Men. I'm on Excalibur #1. The idea of Apocalypse, or whatever the hell he says his name is, is amazing!!!

I think it's like -=A=- or something, right? Wild.

Excalibur is a solid book but, compared to the other Dawn of X launches, it moves a little slower. Books like X-Force and Marauders immediately tell you who's in them and what they're about. Excalibur takes a bit longer to set itself up. It's good, and ultimately worthwhile, but it's got a much more deliberate pace than some of the other books.

Hope you keep digging them!

Here's a thought. Method Man as Blue Marvel.

Yeah, is that supposed to be his real name, or new 'redemption' name, or just basically En Sabah Nur in his own language and he's just trolling people to have them pronounce it in his tongue?

Wanna learn a new language? Learn Krakoan. :lolol

Hilariously, it's pretty much the last one.

His whole schtick has been about mutant supremacy as an inalienable right, and a name that's only pronounceable by mutants is exactly what he'd do with a new mutant language.

It's about 10% that Magneto/Pyro scene from X2, 90% him just being a gigantic dick.

Lol whatever it is, I want barely tolerable good guy Apocalypse to stay. It's hilarious.

I'm looking for the name of an enigmatic dimension-hopper, but it's been difficult because I don't recall even half of the needed details!

I think she got some coverage a year or two ago cause she was going to make more appearances, either in her own title or a group title.

She had only so many details to offer anyone; the audience didn't know everything about her.

She was, if I recall correctly, "born" out of the mid-'90s chaos involving Onslaught and Heroes Reborn. To that end, she might be "related" or connected in some way to the Franklin Richards character. Jumping universes is part of her repertoire.

Despite the age of the events that led to her existence, she's probably no different in appearance to a teen hero.

I've tried looking, but to no avail as of now. Let me know if a name or detail sounds familiar, thank you.

The only character I can think of who vaguely matches some of the details (but not all) is Voyager, a new character created a couple years ago for the Avengers: No Surrender story.

If you can think of any more details, I can keep digging!

Voyager isn't the one I'm thinking about, unfortunately.

I can see an article with some teaser pages in my mind, but most of the text didn't "come along for the ride"!

She doesn't look that old, she was covered-up, secretive, a gun/blaster wielder (at times if nothing else), and may have invaded the hallway of some facility in one of her more significant issues. Admittedly, this isn't rare regarding Marvel characters!

What was the name of the Earth/Pocket Universe which Franklin "created" to save the Marvel Heroes after Onslaught? Almost every Earth or universe has its own designation. Perhaps I can narrow this down further with that!

Is it Nomad, the Bucky from Heroes Reborn? (I am totally grasping at straws here.)

Hey Die, is that outfit on the wiki the most recent Nomad outfit or is there a new one? I have a friend with an OC inspired by her and she'd like to update her design possibly.

My friends and I joke about other 20th Century Fox franchises being merged into the Marvel comic book universe. Imagine if the Guardians of the Galaxy travel to Planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania :lol.

I'm pretty sure that's her most current look. That's from her appearance in Future Foundation, which is from last year. I don't think she's shown up in anything else since then.

John McClane and Spider-Man foil a hostage situation or GTFO

Got it! Thank you.

That's who it was! Rebecca Barnes, aka "Rikki"!

Thank you!

https://www.marvel.com/articles/comi...never-heard-of

Ha ha, we did it!

I think I just found a forgotten (cause he doesn't come up anymore) character who's stories look interesting given the obvious "Giant Robot" angle: Juston Seyfert.

Basically, it feels like an "Iron Giant by way of Marvel" story when the kid finds a Sentinel Robot in bad shape.

Sentinels have always given the X-Men all kinds of grief, but to have one in such a role makes the two same-named series look interesting.

https://www.marvel.com/comics/series...el_2003_-_2004

https://www.marvel.com/comics/series...el_2005_-_2006

It's got a very Iron Giant vibe, for sure. It was part of Marvel's teen-skewing Tsunami line (which also gave us Runaways), and the intention was to do stories that were a little bit more about emotional stakes than big supervillain fights. Plus, Sean McKeever writes great teen stories. It's worth checking out!

(That said, it's mainly worth checking out so that you can move on to the fantastic Avengers Arena series he appears in, which is Teen Heroes Battle Royale. It's surprisingly good.)

"Teen-skewing Tsunami line"!?

Found this little gem today, and the artwork is sharp. Is this Tsunami Line?

I don't think it was? It's maybe part of the same mindset the Tsunami line had. There was a period in the early/mid-2000s where manga was blowing up in the bookstores (also, there were bookstores) and Marvel was struggling to compete. They ended up reaching out to some manga and manga-ish artists to try and benefit from that trend. It mostly didn't work (folks want superheroes from Marvel, generally), but it led to some interesting comics. One of my favorites from that era was Wolverine: Snikt, from the artist behind Blame!

Tsunami was part of the same appeal, where the graphic novels were sized to match the stuff Viz and Tokyopop were releasing, but it was all either preexisting Marvel characters (Human Torch, Venom) or new characters in the Marvel Universe (Runaways, Sentinel).

The "Marvelscope" format, man, that takes me back! They did a few of those landscape-format issues, and they were a pain in the ass to shelve. There was a New X-Men one that was fun, but I don't think anything else ever bubbled up.

Not all winners from that era, but the staff was sincerely trying to broaden their market.

Found this at an antique shop and figured it was an older series, but "Codename: Genetix" isn't a name on Marvel's official website insofar as I can tell!

Note: Sorry about the bad rotation! I fix that in my phone's gallery, but inputting it as an attachment apparently keeps the original orientation.

Oh, man, Marvel UK comics. They were pretty bad! It's a lot of very Extreme characters, and really nothing that Marvel's going to want to acknowledge nowadays. (Genetix as a team does get a Wikipedia entry, though!) The only stuff that really carried over into the main Marvel line was Death's Head II (which eventually reverted to the much more popular Death's Head) and maybe Motormouth.

The bigger deal for the Marvel UK line was that it brought in a bunch of super-talented artists, most of whom would go on to do mainline American superhero books. Off the top of my head, that imprint gave us Gary Frank, Bryan Hitch, Liam Sharp... probably a bunch of others, too. Good line for generating talent, bad line for quality characters.

Oh, I overlooked that "Marvel UK" aspect!

What was so "bad" about them though?

"Bad" was maybe a kneejerk for me. I don't... I don't have very fond memories of a lot of those kinds of comics. There was a point in the early-90s, when Image was hitting it big, that every company massively overproduced, and a lot of books that barely had a reason to exist got released. Marvel in particular...

So, Marvel was losing market share in the early-90s to Image and a bunch of smaller publishers. They were still dominant, but each month they were a little less dominant. Marvel decided that the way to compete was to basically pull the oxygen out of the room. They figured that retailers, when ordering their comics for the month, would order Marvel first, Image second, DC third, everyone else last. So if Marvel could eat up more of the stores' monthly budget, there'd be less orders for other companies' books. Since they couldn't necessarily get more sales for existing titles (that's really hard to do), the easiest thing would be to release a ton of new comics. Ghost Rider's popular? How about a whole line of Ghost Rider comics? How about some books full of random short stories for 4x the cover price? Marvel UK was another big push to get a ton of books on the shelves that didn't really have a strong reason to exist, and were only there because Marvel felt like retailers (and, to a lesser extent, fans) would order anything Marvel put out, and do it in huge numbers.

Basically, they're books that were only made to crowd other publishers off of the shelves. In a more content-driven marketplace, they'd probably never have been released.

That said! I'm sure there's some value to be had in the stories. Like I said, a bunch of really good artists cut their teeth on the Marvel UK characters, so that alone gives them some validation. The stories and characters aren't really to my taste (they're all a very 90s flavor of violent and intense that I find faintly embarrassing nowadays), but that's a totally subjective evaluation. I probably should'nt've said "bad"!

You successfully explained a crucial aspect of Marvel's "business" model during the comics hell of the '90s, so I'm not gonna nitpick too heavily!

And I was a tad wrong, as Marvel's official website does mention the Genetix team if only in passing: https://www.marvel.com/teams-and-groups/mys-tech

Also, that Genetix issue advertised a few other things towards the back!